Their Virgin Captive(64)

“And they stayed put here for that very reason, according to Ben Kunayak. Ben said that Preston was madder than a wet hen when you threw him out of the office, not depressed. In the parking lot, security heard him shouting that he was going to call Gavin and demand his job back or sue.”

“Did you check Preston’s cell?” Slade asked. “Had he called Gavin?”

“I found his cell, but it was demolished.” The sheriff pointed to a table off to the side. Slade could see the decimated phone. It didn’t just look broken, but like someone had tried to disintegrate it.

“Is the SIM card inside?” The SIM card would tell them who Preston had called. Slade stepped toward the table, but Dex put a hand out.

“Don’t touch it. Chain of evidence is important. If this isn’t a suicide, then we don’t want to fuck up the evidence since you might be the prime suspect in a murder investigation.” Dex always knew how to put things as succinctly as possible. Slade looked to the sheriff, who solemnly nodded his head.

“You’re involved, either way,” Mike explained. “He was your employee, and you had an altercation with him shortly before his death. I am definitely going to need a statement. Now, rumor has it that you and both of your brothers were at Marnie’s recently, and there was quite a scene. This man hasn’t been dead for long. There’s no rigor, and his body was still warm when we tried to revive him. I think the TOD will clear you, but we have to go through the motions first. And you’re right, the SIM card is missing. There are also some signs of struggle.”

“I punched him before his death,” Slade admitted. “That should account for the bruising on his face.”

Mike nodded, jotting a few notes. “Thanks, but there’s more. Quite frankly, his skin isn’t the right color for a hanging. I don’t believe for a second this man died of asphyxiation. This room has an eight foot ceiling, not high enough for the long fall necessary to break someone’s neck.

Yet it appears that’s what happened. It takes more force than you would guess to kill a man that way. None of this adds up.”

Dex looked around the room. The belt that had been used in the hanging still swung from the ceiling. “How did he get up there? Did you move a chair? A table?” Mike wiped a hand across his face and looked like he would really rather be fishing. “That would be question number three. Nothing has been moved except the body, and that was only moved in an attempt to revive him. Ben took him down and tried CPR, but he was gone.” Slade came to several conclusions, none of them pleasant. Preston hadn’t been the tallest man, maybe five foot nine inches. The ceiling was at most eight feet. He would have needed something to lift him to the right height. “So unless he jumped, then someone helped him up there. That means someone killed Preston because he knew something or did something.”



“Anything going on at Black Oak that I should know about?” Mike asked. “Any takeover attempts? Corporate espionage?”

Corporate politics could be nasty, but Black Oak Oil was solid. They weren’t developing anything another company would want. They were in the business of finding oil and refining it.

Slade had a bad feeling that this wasn’t about Black Oak Oil at all. This was about Hannah.

Everything had been about her, he suspected, like the virus being uploaded to the site. Someone had followed his obsession over three thousand miles. That was sick dedication.

Someone had watched Hannah much more closely than they’d imagined.

“Where are the techs, Scott and Lyle?” Slade asked, his voice hoarse.

He ran through the series of events and came to one conclusion: The murderer—and Hannah’s stalker—had to be one of them. Lyle had been in the office when Dex had carried Hannah out. Scott had planned an “important” lunch with her that very day. Gossip being what it was, either could have easily found out where he and his brothers had taken her. Either could have uploaded the virus.

“As far as I know, they’re at the lodge. I was going to head over there and talk to them as soon as we wrapped everything up here. They can’t go anywhere until tomorrow. The only way out is by plane, and Jimmy is passed out, according to Marnie,” Mike explained.

Whichever tech was the guilty party, he wouldn’t want to leave. He would still want Hannah—quickly—before anyone had time to figure out that Preston had been murdered and who’d been the culprit. Reaching Hannah meant traveling to the house. Anyone with access to a car could do that.

His blood running cold, Slade punched in Gavin’s number. He would tell his older brother to take Hannah into the mountains. Gavin knew that terrain in a way Scott and Lyle wouldn’t.